Look for the Obama administration this morning to release its national policy encouraging the use of "catch shares" in fisheries management.
Of course, individual fishing quotas, cooperative allocations and the like are old hat to us Alaskans.
But in New England, many fishermen regard these catch share thingies as an alien concept not to be trusted.
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7 comments:
Catch shares are all right if they are done correctly. The catchers and crew that have worked on the boats should get shares based on their past fishing history. If a boat always gave 30% to the crew than 30% of the shares should be given to the crew. No giving up of 100% to the boat owner who is rarely on the boat.
Unfortunately, crew often jump boat to boat and like to live outside the grid to avoid paying taxes...if you can find crew willing to take care of their own paperwork to prove ownership of shares you'd have something but good luck with that. As for owners, they take on the liability of the entire operation where crew are able to jump around to different fisheries and answer to no one, they need not be involved in fisheries management or politics. You have ownership or you have freedom, not both.
The crew always loses out, I fished Halibut and Black Cod most of the 80s and up till 94 and I always paid taxes ,but crew got nothing with the move to ifq. I did move into other fisheries and regret not buying in from the get go.Owners that never fished really should have been cut out and give the resource to fisherman who fish.
As a former deckhand for a long time, I paid my taxes, (not always on time but paid them in full) and paid my dues, many times over....I trusted, the boat owners to take care of my future, so that I could give my family the necessities in life...That didn't happen because the boat owner had his own agenda...promoting his own interests first,(yachts, planes, Playboy mansions, exotic trips, fancy cars and trucks.....hey....look at me!...I'm a big shot!) To the expense of smaller crew shares for the rest of the deck...Right to private access my ass!....Sounds like local crony-ism in Alaska. Is this the kind of example to set for your offspring?...Public resources should be allowed access by all....no matter how long you have fished, or how well you did in those few qualifying years....My Great great grandfathers were gold miners on the yukon, can I claim private rights to all mineral ownership to the DNR? If the river rolls my gold down the rapids, can I still claim it's mine?....I guess it depends whose pockets I'm lining, and who's weighing the gold!.....hahaha..you're all going to hell!....
Good news.....the State of Alaska has included 250K in 2010 budget for crew member data collection. In a perfect world crew will be compensated for their hard work and commitment to the fishing industry on any more privatization schemes. Crew deserve their historical percentages.
It will be interesting to see which years they will use as the qualifying parameters, and what methods they will use to determine validity of crew's shares, and how many. I'm not holding my breath. There's too much private influence in the state government, already.
Feb Council meeting in Portland....some small bit of comfort for crew/second generation IFQ owners. Sent forward for analysis- Amend hired skipper privaleges to sunset on any future quota bought/traded/gifted....will downstream effect come for crab Q's? Initial issues will no longer be able to buy new quota and apply their leasing ability to extract their 50-70% lease fees thus shafting the boots on deck crews. Thank you guys who selflessly put themselves in the line of fire of corporate lobbyists and pushed this through the NPFMC.
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